Machine translation has entered the marketplace as a beneficial technology for every day tasks and for business purposes. For instance, commercial applications are used on the Internet for the automatic translation of Web pages and news articles. In addition, companies offer software that automatically translates Web sites for localization purposes. Other commercial software provides translations of business documents, such as memoranda and e-mails.
Microsoft's Writing Wizard™ is an exemplary educational tool that uses machine translation to assist with business writing. The Writing Wizard™ suggests idiomatic phrases to English language learners based on submitted foreign language phrases and/or word collocation. In addition, software products incorporating machine translation are beginning to be used and/or developed by large public school districts, such as the school districts in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, to provide translations of school-related documents to parents who do not speak English. However, no currently available software program provides a user with the ability to automatically produce a plurality of translation exercises that permit the evaluation of language learners.
What are needed are a method and system for automatically generating a plurality of translation exercises that language learners having a particular primary language have difficulty translating.
A need exists for providing such a method and system in a learning environment and/or to an instructor.
A need exists for a method of reducing the time required for an instructor to generate assessment items for a language assessment.
A further need exists for a method of generating an increased number of assessment items directed to a particular translation difficulty for language learners having a particular primary dialect.
The present disclosure is directed to solving one or more of the above-listed problems.